This West End revival of smart monologue about drug dealing on the Dark Web is well written if a bit slight.
TRYST – Tabard Theatre
George Joseph Smith was a petty thief and con man who preyed on the most vulnerable women he could find. He would win their love, persuade them to elope, then strand them on their honeymoon after cleaning out their bank account.
THEBES LAND – Arcola Theatre
A playwright wants to write a play about patricide, but with an actual criminal onstage instead of an actor. Initial research leads him to a young man called Martin Santos, serving consecutive life sentences in Belmarsh for killing his father.
THE LISTENING ROOM – Theatre Royal Stratford East
Can violent criminals be rehabilitated, and can their victims ever forgive them? The Listening Room says yes. This verbatim piece tells the stories of three violent crimes, primarily from the perspective of the perpetrators. Some character background sets the scene for climactic moments where they commit their offences, but at least half of each of […]
EYES CLOSED, EARS COVERED – Bunker Theatre
Alex Gwyther’s Eyes Closed, Ears Covered is a slippery play that continuously raises questions. We’re immediately presented with Alyson Cummins’ concrete-grey, angular set, suggestive of a brutalist play park in a rundown housing estate.
HEATHER – #EdFringe
Harry receives a children’s book manuscript from an unknown writer, Heather Eames. Impressed, he wants to discuss an advance, rights and making her book the Next Big Thing, but Heather’s based outside of London, heavily pregnant and ill.
MINE – #EdFringe
A woman falls asleep in front of the telly waiting for her teenaged son to come home. Instead, the police knocking on her door wakes her up at 3 am. Her son’s fine, but he’s done something so horrendous she refuses to disclose it.
INK – Almeida Theatre
Graham tells the eye-opening story of how Murdoch bought the ailing Sun newspaper and turned it into Britain’s most popular tabloid by focusing on the tycoon’s relationship with Larry Lamb, the paper’s new editor, and the rivalry between Lamb and his former boss, the Mirror editor Hugh Cudlipp.
DISCONNECT – Ugly Duck
Imagine a production of Waiting for Godot with more characters, set in space, where the audience chooses the outcome of the story. What you are picturing is probably gloriously weird and kitschy.
SUBLIME – Tristan Bates
Sam and Clara live the ordinary, domestic life of a young professional couple, until Sam’s sister Sophie turns up unannounced. The playful, carefree young woman eventually chameleons into someone much more sinister.
THE BAD SEED – Brockley Jack Studio Theatre
Rhoda is the picture-perfect 1950s American child. Obedient, clever and helpful, she is a dream for any parent. But after the death of a classmate who won the penmanship medal Rhoda coveted, mum Christine’s investigations into past “accident” uncover a dark secret from her own childhood that means Rhoda isn’t all that seems.
THE MONKEY – Theatre 503
John Stanley’s dark comedy could easily descend into poverty porn, but he avoids this pitfall with a focus on detailed characterisation and the consequences of drug addiction, both of which can translate to any social class.
SIREN – Vaults
As the Welsh part of Celtic Trilogy at the VAULT Festival, Over The Limit Theatre with Siren has arguably saved the best to last.
THE LONG TRICK – Vaults
Tristan is the stuff of Cornish legends. The Robin Hood-esque figure who lives along the Helford River gives much needed gifts to local people the moment they reach utter despair – or so people believe.
WHERE DO LITTLE BIRDS GO? – Old Red Lion Theatre
New play about a young working-class woman’s experiences in 1960s London is small, but inspirational.
IF WE GOT SOME MORE COCAINE – Old Red Lion Theatre
New two-hander about petty criminal youth in Ireland packs a strong emotional punch amid its hilarity.
FIREBIRD – West End
New debut play inspired by the Rochdale child sex scandal is powerful, but also a bit slight and too short.
hang – Royal Court Theatre
In a bleak neon office (design by Jon Bausor) a much awaited new play by debbie tucker green, always modishly lower-case in titles, takes no prisoners.Except that it is about one, unseen and awaiting a capital punishment decision by his victim in some unspecified but British dystopia. Directed by the author, it is a 75 minute study in unreconciled trauma and the awkward insensitivities of officialdom and protocol. And perhaps (to a sympathetic ear) a good evocation of the perennial inability of non-victims to understand the tearing ,incurable dislocation of personality involved in rape.